SheepShaver (thing)

A computing company called Be used to release a product called the BeBox. It was based around the PowerPC processor, which is the same line of processorsApple have used for their desktops and servers since the mid-90s. However, Be's machines ran their own operating system, which went on to glorious successes and failures on other platforms later. See BeOS.

There had been a tool for 68kAmiga platform called ShapeShifter. This allowed Amiga users to run a Macintosh environment in a software window. This sort of thing is great if you love an obscure platform but want to be able to run mainstream applications. Some time after the BeBox was released, some sassy Be developers (for they are known to be a sexier breed than your regular developer) decided they'd write something similar for their own platform... and SheepShaver was born. It was a hack designed to use with Apple hardware directly, so it would crash if you tried to do unusual things, but it was reasonably speedy.

Some years ago I had both a BeBox running DR7.2 and an Apple 9600 unit with BeOS R5. I ran Be on both, but I couldn't find SheepShaver to buy or download for either anywhere. However, since then the project has become a bit more active and is now released for you to download and use.

See http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SSMain.html

There seems to be a project that now has it working on x86 (typical desktop PCs sold by Dell, HP or innumerable small build shops in your local village), but the webpage is all in Japanese.

At the time of writing, the BeBits website (http://www.bebits.com/app/2103) describes the mac environment you can run thus:

At one stage I had my 9600 set up with all my favourite tools under a dual Mac/Be environment. Unfortunately there were some lag problems with the mouse. When the computer booted under Be the mouse worked fine, but as time went on not all of the actions of the mouse would be recognised. So you'd move the mouse left a lot, and the cursor would move left and stop when you did. But when you then moved the mouse right, it would clear out a buffer somewhere, and move the mouse to the left a bit more before moving it back. The effect on clicks was even more annoying because you'd need to click, and then move the mouse to have the click recognised. I couldn't find a fix for this and so I gave the unit away to a friend who wanted to use it as a firewall.